Drunk father arrested after letting his 1-year-old son steer an SUV while he gave the infant driving instructions
Minnesota Police have arrested a man, who allegedly put his 1-year-son behind the wheel of the SUV they were in and allowed the infant to steer the vehicle. 31-year-old Domonic Green has been charged with child endangerment and driving while intoxicated after the incident took place on July 14 night. An eagle-eyed witness flagged down the police after seen the drunk father driving with the infant standing on his lap in the downtown area of a suburb of Minneapolis called Hopkins. The Hopkins Police Department then said in a statement: "When Green drove by, he was telling the child which way to turn the vehicle [right or left]. Thanks to an alert citizen notifying police to report this incident, a tragedy may have been avoided." The official criminal complaint said that when the officers pulled Green over, they noted that his eyes were bloodshot and watery and that his speech was slurred and his movements were "clumsy."
There had been an open bottle of tequila in the passenger seat, according to the police, who also found a red plastic cup in the cup holder and Green told them that both of these were not his. When the officers asked the drunk father how much he had had to drink that day, he replied: "I'm not even circumference [sic] to do that." Green then explained that his son was not in the car seat at the back because they had only been driving around the block, the Daily Mail reported.
The authorities then confirmed that Green lived around the corner from where he had been pulled over and arrested.
According to the Star Tribune, Green never had a valid Minnesota driver's license. Court records have shown that he pleaded guilty to drunken driving in January of this year. This was just five days before his latest arrest for the same problem. He had also been charged with drunk driving, speeding, and driving without a license at a police stop on December 30 but was only convicted of careless driving at the time.
Green is being held at the Hennepin County Jail at the moment with her bail being set at $20,000. He will appear in court on August 9 for the trial.
In another incident that took place involving drunk parents, a couple was charged with child abandonment after they kept leaving their two young children alone at the three-star resort they had booked in Mallorca. The parents were out most of the time busy getting drunk. The children were taken into protective custody after the parents were reported to the local police for drunken behavior while they were on holiday at the Palma Bay Hotel in El Arena.
The Daily Mail reported that the Scottish couple was charged with child abandonment after the hotel staff called the police following some concerns with the holidaying couple's behavior while they were intoxicated. The pair had left their daughters, 11-year-old and 4-year-old, alone in the hotel in spite of being warned that it was illegal to do so. They were finally arrested. The parents claimed that they had entrusted their children to another couple who was staying at the same hotel, but other families came forward and said that they were the ones who would have to look after the children half the time. It was reported that the children were left in the resort alone for many hours on end and this would sometimes stretch into the evening.
When the police arrived at the resort to investigate, both the parents as well as a last-minute babysitter they hired were all said to have been drunk. The children were taken into protective custody after their mother and step-father were arrested. They have since returned to the UK.
One holidayer said that the two drunk adults "don't deserve children." She had been responsible for taking care of the kids for the most part when the parents went out drinking. 37-year-old Amanda Wignall had been staying in the same resort with her husband and 4-year-old son when she saw the two girls dancing on their own. She became extremely worried when she found the girls alone.
She told the Daily Mail: "When I left the hotel to go to the airport I couldn't stop crying. I could cry now just thinking about how I had to walk away from those children knowing anyone could have picked them up. It could've been another Maddie McCann story, they didn't know how much danger they were in. The eldest told me they'd been on holiday before and the step-dad and her mum had gone out drinking and left them on their own. All that little girl did the whole holiday was look after her little sister. Neither of them would've eaten anything if it wasn't for her."
Wignall bumped into a friend of her's - Kate - when she was on the first day of the holiday and after she spent some time with her, the two women realized that they had both been looking after the girls. She said: "The first time I saw them [the girls], I felt very uncomfortable. One night we saw them on their own and when we eventually found the mum she was absolutely paralytic. She was so drunk she couldn't even lift her head up to speak to us, let alone string a sentence together. I don't know where the step-dad was. The eldest kept saying she had to ring her dad in Scotland, we didn't know what was going on."
When she was on her final night in the resort, Wignall said that she saw the two young girls again and asked them who would be looking after them when she and Kate had left the resort. She claimed that a young couple who were holidaying there from Wigan had agreed to take care of the girls while their parents went out. When she finally went to check out of the resort, however, the staff at the reception told her that the children had been taken into protective custody because the couple from Wigan was also drunk along with the parents, who had been arrested.